Your Opinion: Corporate farms and pork production

Dear Editor:

Twenty-five years ago I thought just as Phyllis Greenfield does that factory farms and corporate agriculture were killing the family farm. The outcry against corporate agriculture is nothing new - that ship sailed a long time ago.

Twenty-five years ago in 1989 I was on the forefront of trying to end the corporate farms onslaught on the family farm. Not only did I preach it I put together a 300-page dossier documenting the demise of many family farms while factory farms were growing and sent it to the U.S. Justice Department.

Why the Justice Department? The Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921 was enacted to keep meat packers from unfairly influencing the open markets and competing with farmers by owning livestock. If enforced the Packers and Stockyards Act would have effectively shut down corporate agriculture. It was the Justice Department's responsibility to enforce the act.

I served on the Missouri Pork Producers Association board for eight years in the early '90s and during that time witnessed many policy changes that seemed to favor the biggest of farms.

I was sitting in the room when the University of Missouri-Columbia announced its partnership with Premium Standard Farms, a corporate farm in Milan, Mo. Under the guise of doing a manure study in confinement buildings, the university lobbied the state Legislature to lift its ban on corporate agriculture in the three counties in north Missouri that were part of Premium Standard Farms. DNR was also on board with this project.

To the mostly independent pork producers sitting in this meeting we knew what this alliance meant, that we were being shoved aside. By the time my term was up there was a lot of board members representing corporate agriculture.

In April 1997 an MU economist addressed one of our board meetings encouraging us to go home and tell our producers to ramp up production because Taiwan had broken out with hoof-and-mouth disease. Taiwan was the main pork supplier to Japan and was now under quarantine. No fresh pork products could be exported and hogs were euthanized.

This was only the beginning of a dark time in pork production. It is impossible to explain all of this in 400 words. Let's just call this Part One. Stay tuned.